Different Kinds of Minds
The
first time I called the tax office, I understood the laid-back voice that
answered my question. “Sure,” he said. “You can do whatever you want.” And when
I asked if it was legal he said, “Yes. You can do it that way; it’s legal.”
Well, that made sense to my tax-challenged mind.
A
few minutes later I called back with another question; this time Pete the tax
man answered. He gave a long, complicated explanation using lots of figures and
tax talk. When I sounded confused, he attempted to clarify by plugging in
different numbers. He tried three times, and three times I had no idea what he
was talking about.
I
hated to keep disappointing him, but I had to admit that I still did not
understand. I said that I had a different kind of mind; he said we all
have different kinds of minds. I said that he was right, and that was why he
was at the tax office answering questions and I was at home doing something
else.
But
the trouble is, we cannot always do something else. Sometimes right-brained
teachers need to do their taxes; other times left-brained students need to
write a poem. So how do you get others to understand that there really is a
difference between a trochee and a turkey?
First,
answer their questions in a simple way. We all have indulgent tendencies that
make us want to drone on and on about subjects we like. That is fine, except
when you are dealing with someone who cannot grasp the subject. Recently I
ranted about the proper place of punctuation in relation to quotation marks. I
was having fun, thinking my listeners were enjoying themselves as much as I
was. After I made my final point, I asked how they liked the lecture. One of
them said, “Well, it would have been a lot more interesting if you had quickly
made your point and then stopped talking.”
Keeping
explanations brief is another good way to clear up foggy subjects. If Pete the
tax man had answered my question with a simple yes or no, I would have
understood. But he obviously enjoyed talking about taxes. Why, he probably
reads accounting textbooks during his coffee break; I cannot relate to that.
Finally,
finding something the person can relate to also helps clear the fog. For
instance, we can assure the student who has no concept of rhythm that it is all
around him—the seasons, a heartbeat, the ticktock of a clock. Rhythm really is
everywhere.
Rhythm
is even in the barnyard. Tell your struggling students to learn from expert
poetry teachers—farm animals. A donkey’s HEE-haw is a trochee; a cat’s me-OW is
an iamb. Pointing out familiar sounds will awaken students to the rhythm all
around them.
You
can also keep left-brained students awake by thinking of other sounds they can
relate to—the murmur of conversation, the wind whispering through the willows,
the clip-clop of a horse. They all have rhythm, and they all vary at times.
Students will perk up when—instead of the usual du-DUM of an iamb—they hear you
talking about something familiar, something interesting.
If
Pete had answered my question by talking about something interesting, I would
have perked up too. Of course he never knew I could relate better to a
clip-clopping horse than to long columns of numbers, but he was at least
patient with me. And patience goes a long way when the subject escapes
somebody.
Maybe
Pete was humbly reflecting on his own mind challenges, who knows? Doing so
surely helps us show compassion toward others. Some of us struggle with taxes;
others struggle with poetry. But that is because God designed our minds to be
different. And, really, if we all had the same kind of mind, some things would
never get done—like my taxes.
